Almost There!

The puppy I'm knitting has a body now! It just keeps getting cuter, if you ask me. Now I have the front paws and back paws, and finally the tail to knit, and then he will be complete. As you can imagine, I talk to him a lot as I'm knitting him, so he's become a therapy dog of sorts. 😊

I haven't been around this week because I've been getting used to being uncomfortable from an outpatient procedure I had last Friday. A visit to the dermatologist a few weeks ago led to her finding something suspicious on my back. It turned out to be a basal cell carcinoma, and she scheduled me for August 1 to have it removed. The procedure itself was completely uneventful, but boy does having a line of stitches on your back make for being uncomfortable! I think it's because most of us don't have a lot of padding on our backs. The doctor told me it would be unpleasant for at least a couple of weeks, because there are internal stitches as well as the ones I can see (though not that well, based on where they are located) on my back. I was very happy to hear from her yesterday to learn that they got clear margins on the area they removed. So unless another one pops up again, I should be OK. Though she warned me that with my - as she calls it  - "pale Irish skin" and being of a generation that grew up before sunscreen was invented, it may not be the last time a carcinoma shows up. Ugh. Even after a childhood spent avoiding the sun because I sunburned in record time, I'm paying for it now. 

At least I have a dermatologist who is paying close attention.

So what have I been doing? Well, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get comfortable, or at least less uncomfortable. I know it could be lots worse, but after a summer of ridiculous heat and humidity, I have little patience left for anything. The doctor told me to take it easy for two weeks, and not do anything very vigorous. I've done some reading and a little bit of knitting, but have a hard time really concentrating. I haven't been able to sleep well, so I feel very tired most of the time, which does not help with my attention span.

OK, enough whining, let's just talk about something else.

I don't know if I've ever mentioned the ongoing saga of our garden door. The short version is that we had a door - really more of a panel - that had a padlock on it that closed off the entryway to our front door from the garden. (I'm not explaining this very well, but just go with it.) It was neither attractive nor durable, but it came with the house, and it did what it needed to do. About two years ago, it finally just fell apart, and we took it down. Which is not a big deal, but we agreed that at some point, we wanted to replace it, for two reasons at least: 1) so if the cats were in the garden with us, they could not leave and go out onto the street; and, 2) for privacy and a fake appearance of security (because if someone wants to get in, they can figure out a way). 

When I said something about it earlier this summer, The Tim informed me that it could be "my" project. So I've been looking for someone to give me an estimate on the cost. I finally asked local friends for a recommendation on Facebook, and a friend who I know has high standards recommended someone who had done some work in her house.

He came yesterday, and took all kinds of measurements. Once again, nothing is standard about the measurements, so it requires a bit of finagling on his part. But he had a couple of good-sounding ideas, and he is going to see what kinds of things would be involved and send me an estimate. If it seems reasonable at all, I'm gonna go with it because most people I contacted either wouldn't come into the city to do the work, or weren't interested in such a small project. The thing I didn't tell them, since they were being kind of rude about it, is that we have some internal door-type and other projects that, if the garden door project would turn out well, we would consider asking for estimates for those as well. So we'll see how it goes, but I would love to have a garden door again. And the cats would be thrilled, because then they could explore when one or both of us are out there. And at a minimum, Alfie MUST be allowed to do that!

And that's the excitement around here lately. I just realized that this post is brought to you be the letter P:

Puppy

Pitiful me

Property improvement

But somehow, "Tryon Street" doesn't have the same ring to it as "Sesame Street," does it?

Take care, and I'll be back soon!

🌷🌹🌻

Relax No More

Hello there and happy too hot and humid Monday. Why no, I'm not enjoying it, but thank you for asking anyway.

I have finally thrown in the towel (yarn?) and have decided I shall Relax No More. Not actual relaxing - I mean, that's a major part of my lifestyle, I'm not going insane. 

But I am finished with trying to knit myself a Relax Tee.

A little bit of background. Years ago (pre-pandemic), I knit nearly an entire version of the Edie pattern in Quince & Co. Sparrow yarn. I had put the sleeve stitches on waste yarn while I finished the body. When I picked it up to do the sleeves, "someone" had apparently gotten into it and not only pulled out the waste yarn, but a lot of the stitches. I asked three different "expert knitter" friends if they could help, and all of them tried, but couldn't figure out where in the pattern things were, or how to repair things. So I frogged the entire thing, and put it away to use again sometime.

I decided this summer was the time. So I pulled it out, and figured I probably had enough to make some other summer top. I was no longer interested in using the yarn for the Edie top, and looked for something else. Everyone and their brother was raving about Aimee Sher's Relax Tee - some people were making multiples. I liked the look of it, so I decided to give that pattern a try. 

I worked my way through most of the body. And I gotta tell you, I wasn't feeling it. I like the yarn and was not having any problem knitting with it, but a) I was wondering why I chose the color I did (Port - pretty, but kind of dark for summertime), and b) why everyone enjoyed knitting this pattern. I can't even tell you what it was about it, but I was just not feeling the love, you know? 

Before starting on the sleeves, I decided to try it on. It would fit fine in the end, but ... meh. I decided to put it aside for a few days, and then see if I wanted to finish. 

I do not. I have decided that at least right now, that pattern is not for me. Maybe later it will be my most favorite pattern I ever made, but right now, this summer, I am not enjoying it, I am not relaxing at all while knitting it, and I am done. 

I've also decided that the yarn and I are also parting ways. I've tried two separate things with it, and though yes, I could go back and knit another Edie, I'm just finished with this yarn in this color. As Marie Kondo would say, it's not longer bringing me joy.

Actually, I'm OK with all of this. Yes, I spent a good portion of the summer knitting on this project and have nothing to show for it but a bag of re-wound yarn and some untouched skeins. It's pretty yarn, the color is nice, but I'm done with the whole shebang. There are at least 3 or 4 full unwound skeins, and a decent amount of other skeins re-wound into balls (I have no idea exactly how much, sorry). 

My original plan was to donate it, but then I thought I'd at least ask if any of you are interested in it at all. If you are, I'm more than happy to send it to your very own house, so let me know. If you are a small-ish person, or knitting for a small-ish person, I'm sure you could get a tank top or short-sleeved top out of all of it. Otherwise, you might need to mix and match or knit a thousand washcloths or something with it.

(You can ignore this paragraph  - the yarn has found a home! So that's everything about that. Do let me know if you are interested in the yarn - you can send me an e-mail at baclancyATverizon.net, or let me know in the comments. If I don't hear from anyone by the end of this week, I'll go ahead and donate it. I want someone to enjoy it and use it instead of simply throwing it away.)

And I'll find another project. I have lots of socks I owe to people, and I actually find knitting those relaxing, so if nothing else, I can work on socks for a while.

I'm actually relieved to be officially decided I'm finished with the Relax Tee project. It was hanging over my head more than I realized.

Please don't let this post discourage you, if you were considering the pattern. Like I said, I think at this moment in time, my head and heart are just not in it - by I do hope to try it again someday.

*****

This week is one of those busy running around kind of weeks. And Friday is the first of August, which makes me happy. This has seemed like an eternal July, and though I hate to wish my life away, I'll be glad to move into another month, especially one that brings us closer to fall. Hopefully August and I will be better friends - we'll see! 😊

It's Monday ... Again

Funny how it happens every week, huh?

The last few weeks, I've been feeling kind of sad on Sunday afternoons and evenings, and I couldn't quite figure out why. I don't have a job to dread, or any unpleasant activities that happen every single week on Monday, so it was a bit of a puzzle.

Then it occurred to me - during the week, I'm on my own the entire day. Yes, the cats are here, but unlike the weekend days, The Tim is at work. Thinking about it more, I decided that it's more the idea of someone else being around that I like. Some weekends we have plans, so we do things together for most/all of the weekend, but frankly most of the time, we do our own thing. Since I get nothing but alone time all week, I try to give him as much alone time as I can when the weekend comes, because he's not a fan of being social 24/7 any more than I am. 

Anyway, once I figured that out, it made sense to me. And who knows, maybe I am just biologically tuned to feel a bit down on Sundays, after a lifetime of having other, more intense, reasons.

*****

Last week, my niece La Liz sent us a text, asking us to make a video for her husband Greg. He is turning 50 on Thursday, and she had asked a bunch of family and friends to make a video, saying one thing they liked about him. You may or may not remember that Greg is a HUGE Baltimore Orioles fan. We went to the Phillies-Orioles game in Baltimore with them last summer. And he doesn't just love his own team, he can't stand some other teams - the Phillies included!

So Saturday, we got dressed in our Phillies t-shirts and sat down to make our video. We talked about the reasons we loved him, and then as we were ending it and saying "Happy Birthday, " we both put on our Phillies caps. Then The Tim said, "Oh and one more thing, " and we both said, "Go Phils!" La Liz said she was watching it with tears streaming down her face because it was so lovely, and then almost passed out when we "pulled out the Phillies hats!" She can't wait for him to see it and neither can we. 😂

*****

I was watching a YouTube podcast a week or so ago, and one of the people on it was knitting a sock in the most amazing yarn combo I'd seen in a while. And I could not resist, especially because the accent color in the sock set was turquoise, and I'm a sucker for that color. So I placed an order for it from Hopemade Yarn Co.  It arrived really quickly, and I cast on the next day. I just love it, don't you?

The colors just scream SUMMER to me, which is funny because when I wear socks in the summer, it's white athletic socks with my sneakers - otherwise, it's too hot to wear socks for me. So these will remind me of the good things about summer, while keeping me warm the rest of the year. 

So that's it for now. I hope you have a good week, and have a chance to do something that's just for you.  See you again soon!

The Ugh of Summertime

The way things are going in the country right now, we don't even need a weather report like this, but it's not far off the truth. You know, the kind of weather where you get out of the shower and towel off, only to find that you need to start over. Ugh.

The other day, The Tim said, "Fall will be coming, right?" - and that's when you know it's bad. He's not a fan of summer, but mostly suffers in silence. 

I've been trying to decide what I can work on that won't make me want to pass out or throw up. For once, I'm in the mood to do some of the projects I have around the house that have been on my list for a while, but since we don't have great air-conditioning, it's not really worth even starting. And forget doing stuff outside - I've been forcing myself to go out for my morning walks, but other than that, I stay put inside because it's the kind of weather that actually makes me physically ill.

So there has been more reading than usual, as well as knitting. But I've also been really conscientious about balancing the checkbook (which if you know me, says how desperate I am), and organizing the linen closet. I think I'm wearing out the towels and sheets I've been fooling with them so much!

Anyway, I'm a bit uninspired with my knitting. I have the puppy project, which I showed you recently, that I'm enjoying. But I don't feel like working on that every day. I am on the body part of a Relax Tee, by Aimee Sher, and if I could make myself work on it regularly, it could be finished. But contrary to the name, I do not find the pattern relaxing. 

I have been wanting to make this pattern, and even have yarn chosen. But regardless of the size needle I use, I keep ending up with too many stitches to the inch in the gauge, which I find suspicious, especially since no matter what size needle I try, I get the same numbers! - but there you go. There's a part of me that is tempted to start it anyway, and see how it goes. But I don't want to do that because even if I've done only 10 rows, it will be too disheartening to rip it out.

I guess I'll pull out some sock yarn and wind it because then at least I'll have a project that I can pick up and put down without causing problems. 

Sometimes, it just seems like everything is too much work. For me, that almost always happens in the summer. And really, it's never too much work in reality. So I'm gonna look for a skein of "extra special" sock yarn to use, because that will inspire me.

What about you? Any exciting projects going? Let me know, I'm happy to live (knit?) vicariously!

Thinking of My Mom Today

Today marks 37 years since my mom died. That's a long time ago, but I still think of her - and often talk to her - every single day. 

I love this picture. She said she was probably about 4 years old here, and that people used to bring ponies around the neighborhood when she was a little girl and parents would have their kids photographed on the ponies. When I was a little kid, I used to think my life was supremely lacking and unfair because no one brought a pony - or any other animal - around the neighborhood for any reason, ever. To be 100 percent perfectly honest, if someone brought a pony or a horse or a donkey, or any other out-of-the-ordinary animal to the neighborhood today, I would want a picture with it - even if, for the animal's sake, I wasn't *on* it. 

WHERE HAVE THE NEIGHBORHOOD PONIES GONE???

Anyway, my mother was a lot of fun. After my dad died, and my middle sister finished college and got married and moved away, it was just the two of us for about 10 years. They weren't easy, since we didn't have a lot of money, and she had health issues, but we did have a good time, and I have the best memories of spending time with her. 

This is, I think, her high school graduation photo. It's nice to think of her being so happy and having so much ahead of her, before things that come with adulthood had actually arrived. 

She pretty much always looked like a version of this photo, so I could always recognize her in the bazillion pictures she had from friends and family. 

Though towards the end of her life, when she was probably about a year or so from dying, she had lost a LOT of weight and though she still had all of her hair, it was cut very short so that she didn't have to fool with it much. At the time, she lived with my sister and brother-in-law, and their four kids. She was confined to a wheelchair, so didn't get out as much as she had for all of her life. 

My sister and brother-in-law were invited to a barbecue at a country club where their friends were members during this one particular summer. The friends knew my mother as well, and told my sister to bring her along, since there would be people there that she knew, and it would be a chance for her to get out, etc. So they all got ready and headed to the country club, and for a while at least, things went well. Then a woman who knew my brother-in-law through his work (he is a labor lawyer) came up to talk to him, and he introduced my mother. Well, apparently this woman was one of those types who sees elderly people - particularly those in wheelchairs - as infantile. So she started talking to my mom like she was a little kid - you know, "Oh how ARE you sweetie? Is this fun for you?" And my sister could tell my mom was getting annoyed. 

Then the woman said, "Oh I know who you remind me of - Nancy Reagan!" and my mother responded, "Well that's not good." To which the other woman said, "Oh that's a compliment, I love her and think she is so beautiful." To which my mother said, "Well, then you're a damn fool."

And then they went home. Like, *right* after that. 😂😂😂

That, my friends, is a perfect story about my mother. She could be perfectly nice, and pleasant to anyone and everyone. But she did not suffer fools gladly. When my sister told us about this, none of us were surprised even one small bit. And she had always been like that, it's not something that developed as she got older. 

Yeah, I've got a million stories, and of course she also had a bazillion sayings and expressions, some of which I've shared here. So although I miss her every day and would love for her to be here still (but she'd be over 100 years old, and The Tim said he doesn't think he could take that, LOL), most of my memories are happy ones, or of fun things we did together. She believed that life was to be enjoyed, and as far as I can tell, she enjoyed her life for the most part. 

I know I am like her in a lot of ways, as are my sisters. But there was only one person who was actually her. So raise a glass today and do a "goddam toast" in her honor. 

That is, if you can bear it, since it's "hotter than Billy be damned." 😉